


Levi's Squad

by the_original_n_chan



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon-Compliant, Character Reflections, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_original_n_chan/pseuds/the_original_n_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi gets to know his new squad, and they learn some things about him too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Levi's Squad

**Author's Note:**

> Set around the beginning of chapter 52, while they're at their first hide-out, so there are probably some spoilers.
> 
> Disclaimer: All rights reserved to the original creators. No copyright infringement is intended.

Levi leaned back in his chair, sipping his tea, as he studied his new squad. The tea was made out of some kind of bark, and it was completely disgusting (what was he, a goat?—or whatever the fuck it was that ate trees), but Sasha had claimed that it was good for aches and pains. He’d tolerate the swill if it did something for his leg. 

He’d pushed himself too hard today, but he’d needed to—things were due to heat up, probably sooner rather than later, and he had to know his people before it all went to shit and they were relying on each other for their lives. It wasn’t the first time his squad had been reconstituted, but it was the first time starting over from scratch with entirely new members, and every last one of them barely out of training. On the other hand, considering what they’d all survived so far, they could hardly be called raw recruits.

He’d read their trainee reports, but words on paper were never enough, and aside from Mikasa and Eren in his Titan form, he hadn’t actually seen them in battle. You didn’t know someone for real until you’d lived with them, worked with them, fought and sweated and bled by their side. But they could at least make a start.

So that morning after breakfast he’d herded them all outside and pointed to the packs he’d lined up on the ranger station’s porch. “Grab a pack and a rifle. You’re going running.” Most of them had groaned, but that was soldiers for you—always bitching.

“How far are we running?” Jean asked as he shrugged on his pack, and Levi stared at him just long enough for him to start to get visibly nervous.

“Just run.” Levi jerked his chin toward the nearest trail head. “Follow the white blazes, out and back.” According to the map, that was about ten kilometers through forested hills. It had put the kids through their paces pretty well.

And him, too—he’d run along with them, which wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done, but he wasn’t the kind of officious fuck who goaded his soldiers on by shouting orders at them from horseback or some other shit like that. The only concessions he’d made to his injury were running without a pack and not trying to chase the leaders—and taking the occasional shortcut through the trees when the path looped back, but that was mostly to give him the chance to get to see everyone. Armin was exactly as hopeless as Shadis’s reports had indicated—he’d trailed the entire way and stumbled back into the home clearing almost ten minutes after the rest. And yet somehow he’d managed to survive Shiganshina, Trost, the 57th Expedition, _and_ the rescue mission. The kid had to be part cockroach. Mikasa had led the pack unchallenged for almost the entire way, but Sasha had been a surprise, her easy, energy-saving lope turning into a sudden burst of speed at the end that had had her and Mikasa racing in a near-sprint to the finish. Everyone else was fit enough but unexceptional.

Back at camp, he’d set them to target shooting, and then, after lunch, cleaning, and a short rest, hand-to-hand combat, one-on-one bouts with each of the other squad members, and then, at the end, with him. Which was cheating, a little, because they’d all gotten themselves tired out while he was sitting on his ass evaluating them. And after he’d put them all on the ground a couple of times, one by one (Mikasa and Eren first, while he was freshest—because, once more, cheating—all the way down to Armin, who predictably sucked ass at that too), he’d had them try group fighting, two or three on one, and _that_ was the biggest clusterfuck he’d seen in a while. The _fuck_ was the whole military training operation thinking—did they not even _imagine_ that soldiers could get ganged up on? Maybe not such an issue for the Survey Corps, true, but when the Garrison and MPs were supposed to take care of crowd control? Did they really think a rioting mob would politely come at them one at a time, or were they relying that much on their firearms? He’d made a note to work the kids hard on that, as both attackers and defenders—they needed it both for their own protection and for the advantage that wolf-pack tactics could give them. 

So now, after all of that exertion, the brats had gotten themselves bathed and fed, and were sprawling around the dining table in various positions of exhaustion. As Levi scrutinized them over the rim of his cup, Sasha, face down next to her polished-clean plate, let out a long, whining sigh. “I’m so dead,” she moaned. “C’n I go to bed now? _Pleeeeeease?_ ”

“Are you on dish duty?” he asked. Sasha flinched, mumbled something inaudible into the wood grain, and Levi could almost see the thoughts of _oh shit, it’s not my turn, is it_ rising like heat waves from the heads of all the kids. He snorted, somewhere between amused and annoyed. “Work it out among yourselves, or else I’ll assign it.”

“Yes, Captain,” rose the ragged chorus, and although nobody sprang up immediately to start sorting things out, Levi considered it dealt with and went back to his musings in peace. Or—not so much, as he noticed Eren sneaking glances at him, eyeing him when Levi supposedly wasn’t looking. He pointedly returned Eren’s gaze, and Eren flushed, straightening up a little.

“Sorry,” he said, the slightest tremor of nerves in his voice before he surged ahead into what was on his mind. “I was just thinking about watching you fight today. I was really impressed.”

“Most of the time, you were really on your ass,,” Jean muttered, smirking, and Eren glowered at him.

“That’s how you get better! D’you know how many times A—” He choked, stuttered on the name, then went on in a tense growl, “ _Annie_ threw me? But I _learned_ from that.”

“Mmph.” Jean apparently decided not to argue the point, instead shifting his attention to Levi, his expression turning more serious. “So, sir, what happens next? Is there some kind of plan? I mean, we all know we’re not here just for training.”

“The plan as of now is to keep Eren and Historia safely hidden, see what we can learn about Eren’s Titan abilities, and wait for further information and instructions from Erwin.” He ran his thumb idly along the edge of the table, checked it for grime, and then swept the entire group with a warning look. “Waiting around doesn’t mean you get to slack off, though.”

“Aaaah...are we gonna have to run and do all of that ev’ry day?” Sasha complained, and he would have found it irritating, but it was true that it was too much—no good wearing them all out pointlessly when trouble could come at them at any moment.

“Not every day,” he allowed. “Today I was pushing you.”

“It was a test,” Armin murmured. He was slumped low in his chair, staring up at the ceiling, wide blue eyes unfocused. Levi had thought he was drifting in some fog of exhaustion, but apparently his mind was still functioning. Levi tilted his head in acknowledgment.

“In a sense. Yes.” He left unspoken what exactly he’d been testing them on and how they’d done, and no one asked. Mikasa half nodded to herself as if she’d expected as much; Jean’s brows drew together, and Levi could see the wheels turn, click over, some kind of understanding falling into place as he settled back into his chair, his frown smoothing out. 

Interesting. Fleeting glimpses, tiny impressions, layers beneath the surface coming to light. Jean hadn’t asked about the length of the run to be a smartass, Levi thought, _or_ because he was lazy. He’d wanted to see the ground ahead of him, to figure out how to pace himself, to know what was coming and be able to take it into account. Mikasa, in contrast, would just stomp the ground into submission if it got in the way of her goals, and Eren...Eren would fall into every ditch and thorn bush between himself and his destination and still keep plowing through with stubborn determination. The corner of Levi’s mouth quirked at the ridiculous mental image. He thought it was a pretty accurate assessment, though.

He glanced at the other two, the more withdrawn ones. He was a bit concerned about Connie. His first impression had been during that briefing in Erwin’s room, when Hange had brought the kid in to help provide evidence for the appalling claim that the Titans had once been human. Connie had held himself together, standing at attention in front of the commanders and delivering his testimony evenly enough, but his face had been—not even haunted, but blank, shocked numb, with the kind of long stare that some survivors got when they’d seen too much. Levi wouldn’t be surprised if he was just a few straws short of some kind of breakdown. But he’d seemed better since arriving at their hide-out, or at least distracted, trading snark with the others and throwing himself into work and the day’s exercises alike with dogged determination. Good, then, that he was with his friends. The obvious bonds they all shared, from training together, surviving hell together, and now being forged into a team together, under the fire of all the powers in their fucked-up world, even if they didn’t actually realize that last part yet—all of that might just be enough to hold him together, or at the very least to catch him if he fell.

Historia, on the other hand, held herself aloof from everyone. She’d shared her story with them all, toneless as she described her past as if it had belonged to some stranger, as if the others’ reactions of shock and pity meant nothing to her, but something was trapped and burning behind her eyes. He’d felt the bleak emptiness in her when they’d sparred that afternoon, and buried underneath that the _anger,_ deep and wide and not done growing, still directionless, something she didn’t know what to do with yet—maybe she didn’t even know it existed at all—but when she finally went off, at the very least some fucker was going to get a knife in his throat, same as had happened with her mother.

Historia’s mother, throat-cut...and Connie’s turned into a fucking Titan, Eren’s dead, and Mikasa’s— _twice_ —and even Armin’s, he thought he recalled. The _fuck_ was it with mothers? He was starting to think he was lucky not to remember his, not to have ever had one to lose.

“Captain...?” Levi glanced up to see Eren staring down at the table, his hands fisted in his lap, those startlingly green eyes fixed and wide. He was something of a time bomb himself, however tamed he might be at the moment, a fact Levi wasn’t about to forget. “The idea is still to go to Shiganshina, isn’t it? To try to fix the break in Wall Maria? And find my dad’s basement? The commander’s not going to change any of that, is he?”

“Erwin will send the orders, and we’ll follow them, whatever they are. Whether it’s Shiganshina or something else.” He had a feeling it wasn’t going to be Shiganshina, not yet. Erwin’s mind was flying high and wide, now that he was healthy enough to be back in the game, tracking strategies on levels that ran farther out than most people could follow, let alone this bunch of still-naive brats, but Levi could certainly figure out for himself that in the near-term Erwin had concerns much closer to home. Only an idiot turned his back on the people who were waiting to stick a knife in it. He noted the tension in Eren’s jaw and said quietly, “Problem?”

“It’s just...too many people have died already. I don’t know if I can stand it, not being able to do anything.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “If there’s something I can do to, to _end_ this, without any more casualties, a _better_ way—I _have_ to find it!”

“And hey, if all the Titans are human,” Connie’s voice quavered for an instant, gone thin and splintery—the break coming? Levi wondered, but apparently not, because he plunged on, “or _were,_ whatever—how do we even keep fighting them the way we’ve been doing? _Killing_ them? I mean, can we really—if Eren can do something about it, then—”

“ _Captain._ ” Mikasa cut in smoothly, if somewhat tensely, and Levi suspected that her aim at least in part was distraction, trying to defuse some of the pressure that was collecting around Eren. “What about you? Knowing what we now do about the Titans, then....” She trailed off, leaving the actual question unspoken, but he could hear it anyway. 

_How are_ you _going to deal with it, Captain? How do you reconcile yourself to the idea of killing people?_

They should know, he thought. For all that he’d been picking them over, sorting through those bits and pieces of them, they deserved to have a piece of him as well. And if they were to be his squad, then all the more so. They should have some idea of who he really was, if they were going to be under his command. 

“I’ve killed human beings before.” He placed those words into the room very quietly, very precisely, laid them out like coins on the table, the sum of death, of what priests and other such fools might call sin. “It’s a... _readjustment,_ adding Titan kills to that account. But all of those deaths were necessary at the time. And if it turns out to be necessary again....” He shrugged. An unpleasant necessity, certainly. But it wasn’t as if that had ever stopped him before.

Mikasa’s expression was veiled, inscrutable, while Eren just looked serious and brooding, one could even say grim, and it reminded Levi that those two weren’t so innocent either. The others regarded him with varying degrees of shock, disturbance, and dismay—even semi-comatose Sasha, staring up at him from under the curtain of her hair—and although their reaction wasn’t surprising at all, even though he’d expected it, he found that it still pissed him off. _Stupid spoiled fucking judgmental children._ How ignorant could they _still_ be of what they were in for? Of what this filthy, shit-stained world was actually _like?_ Leaning forward onto the table, his eyes hard on theirs, he snarled, “We did some shooting today, or don’t you remember? Those rifles aren’t meant to be used on Titans. They’re for _people._ Three years of military training, and you still haven’t figured that out?” The brats had the sense to look mortified, at least, but he still wanted to kick them. With an effort, he leashed the anger, pushed down the memories— _gunshots echoing back from the shadowy overhead vaults, screams and blood_ —and said flatly, “You’d better think hard about that, then. Could you take those rifles you were hauling around today and use them to gun down other men and women? For your own survival? Or maybe for the survival of _the entire fucking human race?_ ” He glared them all down, and each gaze that flinched from his was a victory, acid though the taste of it might be. No satisfaction in this but raw honesty, but that was enough. 

That...and the thought that maybe he’d given them something to consider, something that they might just be able to use to stay alive.

“I could, I think.” Armin’s voice, though soft, rang clear in the uncomfortable silence that followed. His eyes were unclouded but distant, his face thoughtful as he mused, “Just like if someone gave me the order to die...if I could see that it was necessary, then...yeah. I could do that.”

Well. One could easily believe that was just so much bullshit. But there was something far too still and lucid and ever so slightly sad in Armin’s face. It was the look of someone who was not only seeing his illusions being peeled away, piece by piece, layer by layer, but who knew exactly what it meant, and what he was becoming. It sent a warning prickle down Levi’s spine. Erwin had a clarity like that, but colder, harder, the diamond intensity of a man who knew his own capacities to a precise measure, both for good and for evil. Erwin was certainly no saint—sometimes Levi wondered if the man was even human—and for all Armin’s pretty face and soft-seeming delicacy, he probably wasn’t either. Levi could in fact imagine him pulling that trigger.

And in the meantime the rest of the kids were staring anywhere that meant they wouldn’t meet someone else’s gaze, each one lost in his or her own world of thought, while the questions hovered, flickering shadows passing over their faces: _Can I?_ And, almost more anxiously, _Do I say...?_

Levi huffed an abrupt sigh, suddenly tired to the bone. “This isn’t a quiz,” he said. “There isn’t a right or wrong answer. When the moment comes, you’ll know. And you’ll do what you’ll do. Whether it’s humans or Titans.” Pushing himself up from his chair, he turned away, a slight hitch in his stride as his stiffened leg complained, and headed for the door, taking the remnant of his tea with him. “Whoever ends up doing the dishes, do them _properly._ Then get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll be setting people out on watches, both day and night.” From the corner of his eye, he noted the kids rising to start collecting plates; when Eren moved to take his own, Mikasa feinted, her hand flashing above his and then snatching the plate out from underneath it as he moved to block her. Eren started protesting, saying it was _his_ plate, dammit, and Jean snickered.

“Sir?” Levi glanced back at Connie, who had paused in the middle of helping to clear the table. Raising his voice a little to be heard over the beginnings of a background squabble, he asked, eyes wide, “Did...did you really kill people before?”

Suddenly he found the whole thing morbidly funny. “ _Tch._ I tried to kill _Erwin._ Fucker gave me a squad.” He waved his hand in dismissal as he limped from the room, the clunk of a single plate against the table resounding in the otherwise total silence behind him.

He took himself out onto the porch and leaned up against the wall, looking out at the black nothing of nighttime woods. Somewhere out there some bug or frog or something else nasty was screeching as if it was demented. He hoped the vermin didn’t come inside the house. Through the cracked-open windows of the dining room and kitchen, he could hear the kids moving around, chairs being slid across the floor, accompanied by sweeping noises, plates clattering into the sink, and the sounds of someone working the pump, but for a while there was no talking.

“Okay, that guy?” Connie said at last, breaking the stillness. “Is the _scariest_ guy I’ve ever met.”

Someone—it sounded like Eren or Jean—snorted, either in amusement or agreement, and Sasha chirped, apparently slightly more awake, “I thought Instructor Shadis was the scariest guy.”

“Well, that was before! I hadn’t met the captain then.” Water splashed energetically under Connie’s indignation. “But somehow,” he added after a moment, more quietly, “I don’t know...it’s weird, but...it makes me feel better?” He laughed, a bit shakily. “That’s pretty crazy, right?”

“Mm. I know what you mean, though,” Historia murmured, scarcely audible. “I don’t know if I could explain it, but....” 

There was a thoughtful pause before Eren spoke up, somewhere farther from the window. “When I met Levi’s squad—the one before us—and Squad Leader Hange for the first time, I thought, ‘The Survey Corps is full of weirdoes.’” Levi’s lips tightened at the mention of his lost squad, the still-fresh pain, and the insult to their memory—but Eren had grieved them too, intensely, and Eren’s voice was reflective as much as wry. If there was any mockery in it, it was aimed at himself no less than at anything else. “And everybody else out there thinks they’re all crazy. So Connie, I guess you fit right in.”

“Along with all the rest of us,” Armin murmured drily.

“Yeah, well, so how do you explain me?” Jean retorted. “Unlike you guys, I’m _completely_ normal!”

“You’re here, aren’t you? That pretty much makes you crazy by default.” Jean’s response to Armin’s logic was cut off by Eren’s yelp of dismay.

“Connie, what’re you doing?! You left food smears on that plate! _Give_ me that— _you_ take the broom.”

“H-Hey—”

Shutting out the rest of the kids’ bickering, Levi lifted the almost-forgotten cup to his mouth—smelled the tea’s bitterness at the same time as he registered its lack of warmth, and lowered it again, curling his lip in disgust. With a soundless sigh, he looked out into the dark again.

These kids. Like he was a baby sitter. And yet—

Erwin had given him a squad. But not this one. This one he’d taken for himself. Strange thought, and a strange pride in it, and in the kids themselves, stupid and passionate and undeniably brave, their true potential only just starting to emerge.

Change was coming to the world, and they were going to be at the forefront of it. _His_ squad. He thought he could be satisfied with that.

At the very least, it was something to go on with.

He turned back toward the door, pausing only to pour the rest of Sasha’s brew off the side of the porch before he went inside to collect his coat and rifle. It was going to be a long night’s watch.

And when Hange finally got their fucking ass out here, they’d _better_ have brought some decent tea.

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this quite a while ago and I'm only just now putting it up. I'm not entirely sure I still agree with some of my takes on things, but there are some parts I do like. Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
